Congress could soon take up a bill that would quietly expand the federal government’s power to catalog who backs which lawsuits in America. Rep. Ben Cline’s (R-VA) Protecting Our Courts from Foreign Manipulation Act has already cleared the House Judiciary Committee, and it deserves much closer scrutiny than its title suggests.

The bill is pitched as a response to foreign manipulation of the courts. That concern is understandable. But the mechanism Congress is being asked to bless is one that defenders of donor privacy should recognize immediately: Compel disclosure first, promise restraint later, and hope no one notices how quickly a narrow pretext becomes a broader system of exposure.

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